Time

Not a graduation post, but it is.

Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash

I wrote a post the morning after my son’s graduation, actually it was scribbled in my notebook. It wasn’t a graduation post, it was more like observations. That post will have to wait for another day. Maybe.

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How do I feel now as a mom of a high school graduate? To be honest, right now I’m feeling sadness of the passage of time. Yet, I am proud of our son at the same time. More than words can say.

My son and his good friend created the senior class video. They were recognized at graduation and it was shown on the large screens of the arena where the graduation was held. The video started out with a giant analog clock and the sound of of it’s ticking from the song “Time” by Pink Floyd.

When I first watched the video on the big screen, I was in awe. I was of course looking for our son in the video clips. The video began with clips from their freshman years and faded into the senior year along with the music becoming slower and more sentimental. The video ended with the image of the giant analog clock and ticking filled the air. Powerful!

Part of me, the one that wanted to be noticed, wondered if the production of this video was noticed as much as the “jocks” have been at sporting events. It’s an old wound of mine. I know. I also know this video will stand the passage of time.

I was happy to see they covered all of the talents in their high school: band, school plays, ordinary moments walking down the hall, lunches in the cafeteria, tv news team, school field trips, various clubs all for a class of 500 graduates and they tried to capture them all.

As a proud mom I watched the video again with my husband the next day. We marveled at how well it was choreographed, and how seamless it was created.

Yesterday, I watched it again and it hit differently. I saw the clock in the beginning of the video and felt a haunting ache of how the hands turned back so quickly. It opened to the energy of freshman year all the way through to the senior year. There was a sentimentality to the senior year. Our son was captured signing his name on a special screen allowing the viewer to see their faces as well as there signature. It was one of the last video clips shown. The image faded with the sound of the ticking of the giant analog clock. Powerful. It also gut punched me. Time. Where does it go?

I though of the future of the students. No one knows what will really happen or the joys and hardships they will all face. I wondered who will attend their 60th class reunion or those who’s time will be cut unexpectedly short. Who will be the ones that will succeed by the world’s standard and the ones who will struggle every day.

The only thing that they all have in common is they will experience the ups and downs of life. They all will have moments of joy, sadness, struggles, uncertainty, grief and excitement. Some will find love. Some may never. They will all have their own path after high school and will be surprised it is not a straight line. Some will show up at their own child’s graduation, 25 or 30 years later and wonder where time went. The jocks may have a child with special needs on the graduation floor. The prom queen may be a single mom who keeps smiling but feels like she is dying inside. The shy child could be a mentor to many and own his own corporation. The star athlete could walk with a limp and painfully realize that she is human.

We never know what is in store for us. I guess it doesn’t matter, yet it does. “Live in the present”. They say it like it’s the easiest thing in the world. I try and yet I can’t ignore the passage of time. It still seemed like 5 minutes ago our son started Kindergarten and 10 minutes from when I graduated high school.

So here I am on a cloudy June morning and I am wondering what’s next. I guess life is like that on a Monday morning, but this one hits more. I desperately want to sit in the moment and I am afraid I won’t be able to. It is too much pressure sometimes to feel like we have to live in the moments. Time. It is like sand that slips through our fingers and we aren’t able to grasp it all before it slips away.

Questions:

Do you remember your high school graduation? What were your plans for the future back then?

How have you changed since high school? What was your biggest surprise about life?